Heather Graham by Arabian Nights Read Free Book Online

By the time this is over, you are going to learn a few lessons in common courtesy.
    She closed her eyes tightly as she bit down on her lip, annoyed with herself again. Now she couldn’t shake the image of the man’s lean physique. Whether she despised him or not, she had to admit that he was in very good shape. She doubted that there was a single spot on him from which a half-inch of flesh could be pulled. He was ruggedly, rakishly toned, from his broad shoulders and his chest, with its thick spattering of coarse dark curls, to his handsomely narrow waistline, to …
    Oh, Alex, how long did you stare at him to picture him so clearly? To his well-corded thighs, she finished firmly. She was, she told herself, proving herself objective by giving the man his due, as an applaudable physical specimen.
    And she could still feel the touch of heat and vitality and concrete that had held her so powerfully as he manhandled her, she reminded herself firmly.
    Oh, Dad, how did you get involved with him?
    She reflected suddenly that part of what had happened had been her father’s fault. If he had been planning on her joining him, why hadn’t D’Alesio recognized her name on the first note? Obviously her father had never mentioned her.
    No, she couldn’t blame her father, not when she was so terribly worried about him. If she wanted to blame someone, she could blame herself. Why hadn’t she merely used her father’s name? Because it isn’t my name anymore. And because I like to use my own name when I work so that people won’t think I want to cash in on my father’s reputation. And she had tried to explain to D’Alesio who she was in her second note after his first refusal to see her. He had obviously ripped up the note, since he had accused her of bedroom antics with her own father.
    It shouldn’t have mattered what my name was! Any civil human being should at least have given me the courtesy of listening, she argued silently. But she couldn’t help the intrusion of the facts filtering through her arguments.
    She had wandered into his bathroom only to make sure he was there. She had been desperate, but she reluctantly realized that she shouldn’t have allowed him to make her temper flare.
    Alex temporarily forgot the dilemmas plaguing her as the plane shuddered and convulsed like a shaking tin can as it dipped low to make its final descent to the small airfield at Abu Zaby, the island town in the Persian Gulf that was one of the few major towns in the emirate of Abu Dhabi.
    The gulf itself appeared like a panel of aqua velvet, studded with a million tiny diamonds. And as the plane came closer and closer to sea level, she could begin to make out all manner of ships and boats, from tiny fishing vessels to massive oil tankers. Fishing, Alex knew, was one of the mainstays of the coastal people. Oil was the mainstay of the country.
    The per capita income of the United Arab Emirates was staggering—hundreds of millions of dollars per merely a couple of hundred thousand people. But it was a land still grappling with its sudden catapulting into wealth, and backward in comparison with the Western world. The riches were held by the powerful emirs and sheikhs, and though they cared for their tribal domains like loving parents, the wealth was still theirs.
    Biting her lip, Alex begin to wish she knew a little more about the country. Or a little more of the language. But in school she had spent so much time studying the ancient language and hieroglyphics that she had had little time for Arabic—and besides, she had learned early that the natives who made their living by working for the Egyptologists and archaeologists spoke English quite competently. She had never thought she would be chasing down an Arabian sheikh in the desert of a little-known and tiny oil power.
    The plane came to an abrasive landing. Cheer up, Alex tried to tell herself. Perhaps the wealthy sheikh will be in the city.
    She turned to the young Egyptian she had hired